One is very often asked at present whether we could not have religion stripped from society, or, as people who ask it say, ‘freed’ from religious bondage. But, have we asked ourselves, ‘is religion important?’

Coming from religious upbringing in Indonesia, I am fully aware of the social effect of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. In Indonesian/Malay language, religion is ‘agama’. Etymologically, the word ‘agama’ comes from two Sanskrit word , ‘u’ which means ‘no/not’ and ‘ gama’ which means ‘chaos’ so it means ‘no chaos’ or ‘to prevent chaos’ (in the society). This means that religion is created to maintain social integrity. Of course, religion does not only cover horizontal relationships, relationships between humans, but also maintain the vertical relationship, the relationship with the supernatural (read: God/deity).

I am in agreement with Richard Dawkins’, Sam Harris’, and Christopher Hitchen’s arguments that religion is evil. Yes, it is evil when politics are involved. No doubt. I have the same objection to all organized religions but so does every government in this world. Governments exist to bring goodness to their people. But so does science. Science exists to bring goodness to all the creatures in this world. It is the wickedness of our human minds that bring the ‘evil’ to this world. One of my best friends, Alstair Bharata, said that It is not ‘God’ who made religions, it is us who make religions.

Is religion important? My personal position is YES. Yes. Just like science. Nuclear physics can be used to develop renewable energy as well as atomic bomb. Just like a knife, we can use the knife for preparing a nice (or sometimes bad) meal or to commit murder or even suicide. Religion is for sure can create extremism as in suicide bombings, but also Red Cross organization or The Salvation Army.

I strongly disagree to eliminate completely religions and put ’secularism’ in place like what Richard Dawkins, the atheist missionary, suggests. If he thinks that religion is a bad infection (God Delusion, 2006), he should also be aware that CS Lewis was much earlier campaigning that religion is a good infection (Mere Christianity, 1952). Dawkins in a debate with Francis Collins also argued that “Good and evil–I don’t believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil. I think that there are good things that happen and bad things that happen” (Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132-8,00.html#ixzz0dua30Sdf) which I think show that extremism to certain ideology, not only religion, can blind ones’ senses. I do believe a check-balance is a proper way to keep both religious institutions and secularism ‘on track’.

One of the great difficulties in accepting that religion is good is the fact that many religious people are bad people. I do see this difficulties contains a great ignorance to the fact that non-religious people and atheists do commit such badness. This reminded me of a fantastic quote by C.S. Lewis. He was being asked questions by the Electrical and Musical Industries Christian Fellowship in 1944. One of the questions was: Are there any unmistakable outward signs in a person surrendered to God? Would he be cantankerous? Would he smoke?

The answer he gave:

Take the sour old maid, who is a Christian, but cantakerous. On the other hand, take some pleasant and popular fellow, but who has never been to church. Who knows how much more cantankerous the old maid might be if she were not a Christian, and how much more likeable the nice fellow might be if he were a Christian? You can’t judge Christianity simply by comparing the product in those two people; you would need to know what kind of raw material Christ was working on in both cases.

As Lewis mentioned, we cannot judge religion simply by comparing the product, we do not know what the person would be without religion. Religion is important in making us realize that there are limitations to what the freedom we have in this world and there are things more meaningful than this life like the relationship with the supernatural and preventing anyone saying the really foolish thing that there is no good or evil!

This article is written as a follow-up to my discussion with a fellow Dundonian in Discovery Quay benchpark.

Dilectissime Joshua,

Felix sit annus novus! Ein glückliches neues Jahr…

What a nice letter! I also like the Edradour cream whisky that you sent. What a fantastic present for my recovery! I was suffering from accumulation of research and private duties that made me impossible to undertake anything more in the previous weeks. Hence, my delay replying your letter.

I have a fear that you may be right about the healthy effect of complaining, but I feel that complaining endlessly would not be healthy to the body nor the mind - also such waste of time! As I said previously, being grateful is the antidote surely.

Your topic about dedication in life sounds worth following up. I have just met two young chaps, one whose name is Scott and the other one’s is Liam. Scott is a scientists in a world-renowned drug discovery lab in Portree and Liam is a Christian devout and church-activist also in Portree.  Scott works from 9am to 8pm and back home just for dinner, scientific journal reading, and sleep while Liam has college to attend and (almost) every evening he has church activities from Bible study, choir, to his own Bible reading. For both of these people, they call their lives as dedication to science and God, respectively.

I look up the definition of ‘dedication’ on Merriam-Webster dictionary (here):

1 : an act or rite of dedicating to a divine being or to a sacred use
2 : a devoting or setting aside for a particular purpose
3 : a name and often a message prefixed to a literary, musical, or artistic production in tribute to a person or cause
4 : self-sacrificing devotion <her dedication to the cause>
5 : a ceremony to mark the official completion or opening of something (as a building)

Scott, the scientists, argued that science is limitless and he feels that his research is everything in his life. He hardly participates in public engagement of science and he seldom consider ethics or science contribution to society. While, Liam on the other hand, is very much pre-occupied with his college and church-activities.

In my humble opinion, their lifestyles would certainly drive me mad. At first, I would call them obsessed but it is presumably a bit too strong: that’s why I call it ‘too much dedication’. My disagreement comes from the fact that too much dedication can actually result in narrow-mindedness and extremism as mentioned. As a scientist myself, I do still feel that my research has to be communicated to public as science is one of the pillars in society. Science is blind without ethics and brutal without philosophy.

As a Christian spiritualist, Jesus himself said that we have to help the unbelievers and love them. How can I show my ‘love’ to the people surrounds me or even my own family if I am too busy with Church activities all day? But apart from those: - I agree that dedication is needed for career development and respect/’service’ to God. Surely, moderation is the key - for really it is astonishing how seldom professors and church-leaders remind their ‘minions’ about moderation. Don’t you agree with me?

Vale. Oremus pro invicem.

Yours,

Ho

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Note: All characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely accidental, coincidental, and/or perhaps transcendental.

I was rather surprised yesterday when a friend of mine posted a news clip about the controversial usage of the word ‘Allah’ for Christians’ translation of God in which several churches have been attacked by some extreme Moslems (here). In Indonesia, Christians have been using the word ‘Allah’ for centuries even many people before Islam rose in Arab, Christian Arabs had been using the word ‘Allah’ for centuries and some pagan Arabs had used the word for ‘moon god’. I could see that this issue is mostly stirred by political reasons like what I have experienced in Indonesia several years back - but the dispute did not go this far like in Malaysia.

What puzzles me the most is the fact that in this digital era where many of us have access to internet, why people do not clarify the issue? I had a small discussion with my father about a theologian who tried to convince people about 6-days creation using the argument of the authentic text of Genesis. In the acttual text, the author used the word ‘YOM’ to explain the time of creation which is translated as ‘day’. I laughed. I am not an expert but from the internet, I could actually browse through different definitions of ‘YOM’ which is basically ‘not only day but can also mean unlimited (long) time’. Fair enough, that we might argue that not everything on internet can be trusted but at least a quick 5 minutes browse on internet would help to broaden the knowledge. I do this, not only before writing this text, but also to prepare my knowledge before engaging myself in public or just a simple talk at work (esp. with iPhone and Blackberry are internet friendly now). Well it can be any public figure, politicians, or just a simple person like us. Sometimes I would like to ask one question to these people who feel that they are absolute genius (fair enough if they are a proper genius with proper knowledge). The question is:

‘HAVE YOU ASKED MR. GOOGLE and MRS. WIKI?’

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

- CS Lewis

Just a short reflections of 2009 and a look-forward to 2010. I have to say that 2009 was a year with many new experience, both with sorrow and joy.

Earlier in 2008 I told myself that I am not going anywhere and interesting I travelled a lot (again) in 2009. From US to Indonesia. Meeting many fantastic new friends from Boehringer-Ingelheim Fellows to family reunion in November. 2009 opened my eyes about my future directions (which I do apologize I cannot say it explicitly here due to restraining condition applied to me). I learnt a lot about friendship, a true friendship after several eye-opening events happened.

However 2009 cannot pass without “My Hall of Fame 2009″, some people who have contributed the most to my ‘learning curve’:

1. My family and also Liem family for their continuous support;
2. Prof. Sir Philip Cohen for his mentorship throughout the year;
3. Deborah Spencer, Sandy Neish, Patrick McCarthy, and Kevin Parker for all the discussion in bio-entrepreneurships;
4. Claudia Walther, Sandra Schedler and Monika beutelspacher (RIP) from BIF for all their personal help;
5. Jenny Wang for her prayers all year;
6. Olya dan Dave Reuter for being such good friends;
7. and others whom I cannot named one-by-one. You know you will always be remembered!

Let’s keep the good work! Oremus pro invicem…

Previous years: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008

Photos courtesy of OhlalaMag

Photos courtesy of OhlalaMag